50 LESSONS FEOM NATURE. [CHAP. II. 



regards the immediate apprehension of self-evident truth, 

 yet it is not Hind; it sees both the objective truths, and their 

 necessity. Our intellectual perception of necessary truth is 

 not a passive impotence of imagining two things apart (such 

 as our inability to imagine uncoloured extension), but is an 

 active power of perceiving what is positively and necessarily 

 true. Thus it sees that if we deny in a conclusion truth latent 

 in admitted premises, or refuse to accept both terms of a self- 

 evident proposition, we thereby violate the principle of con 

 tradiction and the primary truth that what is, is. As to the 

 principle of contradiction that anything cannot both be 

 and not be, at the same time and in the same sense our 

 perception of its force is plainly no mere mental impotence, 

 but is positively known to us by its own evidence. The 

 denial or doubt of this principle, or the denial or doubt of 

 our process of inference, results necessarily, like our doubt 

 as to our own existence, in absolute scepticism and mental 

 imbecility. If anything may both be and not be at the 

 same time, then the intellectual world becomes at once a 

 chaos, and all argument unmeaning. Nay, it is even im 

 possible to really deny its truth, for if it is not true, we 

 cannot be certain that in denying it we are not actually 

 affirming it, or that a doubt respecting it is not the same as 

 absolute certainty that it is true. 



Mr. Lewes altogether confounds &quot; reasoning &quot; with sensible 



O 



Mr. Lewes association, and entirely ignores our intellectual 



confounds . ~ 



wHhsemibie a PP reuens i n of what is implied in the pregnant 

 association. wor( j therefore.&quot; He tells us :* &quot; Inference lies at 

 the very root of mental life : for the very combination of 

 present feelings with past feelings, and the consequent infer 

 ence that what was formerly felt in conjunction with one 

 group of feelings, will again be felt if the conditions are re 

 instated this act of inference is necessary to the perception 

 of the object apple, and is like in kind to all other judg 

 ments. Inference is seeing with the mind s eye, rein- 



Problems of Life and Mind, vol. i. p. 257. 



